1. Field of the Invention
2. Description Relative to the Prior Art
In the creation of Architectural, Engineering, or other design-services based fabrications, it is typically required that both graphical and textual descriptions of the final product be produced. Graphical descriptions (‘Drawings’) are typically produced in Computer-Aided Design and Drafting (‘CADD’) software programs such as AutoCAD, and textual descriptions (‘Specifications’) are produced in text processing programs such as Microsoft Word. Drawings and Specifications are complimentary—Drawings typically delineate such information as size, shape, volume, material types, and details of fabrication whereas Specifications typically describe acceptable methods of assembly and standards of quality for the fabrication process as a whole or within its constituent parts. In general terms, the Drawings component can be seen as embodying issues of quantity, and the Specifications component can be seen as responding to issues of quality. The two are combined in what is commonly known as the Project Manual. The activity that entails the preparation of the Project Manual for compensation is known as a Project. A complete Project Manual establishes an unambiguous understanding of the nature and scope of the Project, allowing all parties to the Project to come together to establish specific pricing, fabrication timetables, and expectations of quantity and quality agreeable to all. Furthermore, a complete Project Manual establishes a legal standard by which performance under the Contract for Fabrication can be adjudicated in the event of any disagreement between parties to the Project during or upon completion of the fabrication.
It is commonplace that Drawings are produced first. Drawings consist of a series of lines arranged in such a way as to illustrate a fabrication in whole or in part, together with text notations (‘Drawing Notes’) identifying in writing each material, part, or assembly to ensure an accurate interpretation of the graphical illustrations by the fabricator. It is commonplace that Drawings are prepared by Interns and Junior Designers under the supervision of a Partner or Senior Designer.
After the production of the Drawings is completed or well under way, Specifications are produced. In spite of the critical role Specifications play in the successful completion of a Project, Interns and Junior Designers typically are not skilled in Specifications preparation, often by their own choice, as it is commonly seen as unglamorous drudgery. Specifications are derived manually, most often by professionals specializing in this activity. Specifications may be produced ‘in-house’ but are often produced by external consultants who have no specific knowledge of the Project before receiving the Drawings. Specifications are produced through a laborious process of cataloguing each Drawing Entity in the Drawings and creating a customized Specification text to be associated with it. ‘Drawing Entity’ here refers to any Notation, Item, Material, Part, or Assembly that can be identified as logically discreet or unique within the context of a given Project. A Drawing Entity may be electronically stored in any manner allowing for accurate retrieval, including in Operating System directories or structured databases. Once created, Drawing Entities are often reused in many Projects in a particular office environment, this redundancy being seen as beneficial to productivity. New Drawings are created through new combinations of these basic elements.
The process of Specifications development is susceptible to human error and inaccuracy, with potential consequences to the Project and all parties associated with it of delays, cost overruns, and/or litigation. Specifiers must research each particular material, system or technology referenced in the Drawings, sometimes exhaustively, collate this information, and produce a written document in Industry-standard format (which varies by industry) comprising the complete Specifications Document for the Project in question. Specifications Documents typically run into the many hundreds of pages, and for large projects, well over a thousand pages. The process of creating Specifications Documents can be tedious and time-consuming and on a Project-to-Project basis can be highly redundant, but since each Project is at least slightly different, and since those differences cannot be assumed to be self-evident, it is incumbent upon the Specifier to essentially ‘start-from-scratch’ with each new Project. Much Specifications text can be reused Project-to-Project, but not without completely rereading, editing and modifying as required, re-collating, adding new Specifications text as required by the addition of new Drawing Entities in the Drawings, and subsequent reassembly of all constituent parts to form a new Specifications Document.
The current Invention provides a software link between CADD software used for producing Drawings and Word Processing software used for producing Specifications. This software link ‘tags’ or otherwise identifies all unique Drawing Entities in all Drawings comprising a Project. This Linking Software establishes and maintains a database that associates, on a one-to-one basis, each unique Drawing Entity with a pre-prepared or concurrently prepared block of Specifications Text. In so doing, collating all Drawing Entities in a Project, while ignoring duplicates, allows for the immediate and automatic collation and assembly of a complete Specifications Document. This benefit is accrued incrementally over time, and the initial act of Specifications text creation may be equally as tedious and time-consuming as in conventional methods. However, because each specific Specifications Text Block is associated with a specific Drawing Entity that is in turn associated with it regardless of Project context, reuse of that Drawing Entity in a subsequent Project realizes the aforementioned efficiency with each reuse. Over time, a database of Drawing Entities can be accumulated that may suffice for virtually all Projects, and tools imbedded in the current invention allowing for the easy addition of unique links between new Drawing Entities and new Specifications Text Blocks will eventually allow for the automatic generation and assembly of complete Specifications Documents without review by Specifications professionals.
The software implementing this Link may also provide other necessary functions producing corollary benefits, such as:
A database of Drawing Entities must be created and maintained, and be accessible to all persons needing to modify any or all Drawings associated with a Project. Ready accessibility of this Drawing Entities database allows for automatic insertion of previously defined Drawing Entities into the CADD Drawing, which saves time and increases accuracy as compared with reconstructing Drawing Entities manually, as is typical. The Drawing Entities database can be centrally maintained and updated within an organization to ensure the greatest possible organization-wide standardization and accuracy across all Projects and all Persons authorized to modify any or all Projects.
Updating a Drawing Entity in the central database causes every occurrence of that Entity to be updated throughout a Project or multiple Projects, which is otherwise a time-consuming task prone to human error.
It is not necessary for every imaginable Drawing Entity to be referenced in the database for great efficiencies to be realized. Even if only 90% or so of a new Project is anticipated by the current state of the database, that implies that only 10% of the Project's necessary Drawing Entities need to be constructed from scratch, and accuracy will be much greater since 90% of the new Project's Drawing Entities will already be ‘pre-approved’. Furthermore, upon completion of the new Project, the Database will have expanded by 10% and it can be assumed that in the aggregate, ensuing Projects will have an ever greater efficiency ratio than those previous, tending towards 100% for some, if not all, Projects.